1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an erroneous erasure determination apparatus, method, and computer program product for determining the likelihood of erroneous erasure of image data in an image file.
2. Description of the Related Art
Technologies for improving management convenience for a plurality of image data related to each other by recording and managing them as a single image file are known.
For example, Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 2006-013759 proposes a method for generating a stereoscopic image file by storing two image data (left image data and right image data) that form a stereoscopically viewable image with an identifier for delimiting the image data.
Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 11(1999)-266420 proposes a method for combining and recording a serially photographed plurality of image data as a single compressed continuous still image file.
If an image file including a plurality of image data generated by the method proposed in Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 2006-013759 or Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 11(1999)-266420 is edited using image software of image editing device or the like that can recognize only one front image data, however, the image data recorded following the front image data may possibly be erased erroneously.
For example, when a JPEG image file including a plurality of image data delimited by an identifier, EOI marker, between each image data is opened with ancillary software “Windows Image and Fax Viewer”of Microsoft Windows XP, only an image of the front image data is displayed. Then, when the displayed image is rotated in the right or left direction, the image file is overwritten with the rotation processing performed on the front image data and the subsequent image data erroneously erased.
As such, there is a demand for a method of automatically detecting such erroneous erasure in order to reduce the burden on the user for image data management.
In view of the circumstances described above, it is an object of the present invention to provide an erroneous erasure determination apparatus, method and computer program product capable of determining the likelihood of erroneous erasure of image data in an image file.